trees are people too

not only is the world’s greatest online dance battle the best thing ever because it is the world’s greatest online dance battle, but I was surprised while watching these vids to discover I was looking at them in a whole new light. Suddenly I was analysing them as dirty media, amateur, noisy. All of these qualities and attributes suddenly seemed so glaringly obvious.

The relevance of these videos is in their comparison. Despite Jon M Chu being a film director, the clips he have produced could absolutely be described as post-industrial media. They’re messy, handheld, dirty, noisy and amateur. But you don’t really notice that (we are so desensitised to the shitty quality of youtube) until you look at m&m’s response to the challenge.

The disney queens’ dance video, in comparison, clearly uses professional equipment handled by professional staff. They have lighting, sets, implement effects, zoom and anything else they can find, but despite all this, their video still stinks. It’s got nothing on the unrefined production produced by Jon M Chu’s crew (probably one dude with his phone. A very nice phone, with a nice camera, but you get the idea).

I can’t really work out why I am drawn more to the ‘dirtier’ one than the more refined one. Is this aesthetic – dirty, noisy, handheld, real – one that we are becoming more accustomed too, and one we are appreciating more? Do we prefer to watch something we are ourselves familiar with, as a style we can produce ourselves? Or is this just an issue of street cred, that the genre needs to apply this ‘dirty’ media to retain any sense of reality and credibility (it’s the streets, you know). You watch and tell me.